


no theory to love

by v3ilfire



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:08:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6550132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weeks agonizing over finding the right words to tell her, only to watch her face dissolve from her usual contented smile to absolute mortified shock. WIth good reason - he’d effectively told her that he couldn’t live without her, that she was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that he was sick of waiting for the ‘perfect time’ and wanted her to spend the night with him. In retrospect, her clamping her hands over her mouth and retreating was mild, as far as poor reactions went.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no theory to love

“I think… you broke her,” Oghren grunted. Alistair sighed, his head in his hands. His confession to Nevira had been… well, a little enthusiastic, but in his defense, he had been fairly obvious about his feelings for  _ months _ . Months of watching her rise to the challenge of being a Grey Warden, making all the decisions that he couldn’t and somehow never growing cynical. She was kind and gracious and all the things he could never be in her shoes - and she was  _ cute _ . She never rebuffed his advances - though, now that he thought about it, she never reciprocated them  _ either _ . 

Weeks agonizing over finding the right words to tell her, only to watch her face dissolve from her usual contented smile to absolute mortified shock. WIth good reason - he’d effectively told her that he couldn’t live without her, that she was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that he was sick of waiting for the ‘perfect time’ and wanted her to spend the night with him. In retrospect, her clamping her hands over her mouth and retreating was mild, as far as poor reactions went.

Alistair peered up over his palms to see her sitting at the opposite end of the campsite, hands pressed to each side of her head (an improvement, in his opinion) and eyes wide as they burned their way into the ground. According to their companions, she hadn’t made a single peep in the last two hours.    
“You should speak with her. Perhaps you simply caught her off-guard,” Leliana suggested, taking a seat next to him. Oghren cackled.    
“Ain’t that what clammed her up in the first place?”  The dwarf, unfortunately, was not wrong.   
“I’m going to take a walk,” he said. “ _ Alone _ ,” he added directly at Leliana, who looked on the verge to remind him that this was probably a bad idea. He knew that, but a couple of stray things that wanted to kill him seemed more favorable than watching his feelings teeter off a cliff and fall right into Volcano Unrequited. And then burn up. And die.

The first fifteen minutes of his walk were almost  _ disappointingly _ quiet. Not in the sense that he was in some rare mood to fight for his life, but quiet gave him time to think on the events of the last few hours and replay them in his head in agonizing detail. He could pinpoint the exact  _ word _ on which her face fell (‘perfect’) and could now apply six separate implications to the way she’d squeaked out, “Excuse me,” (none of them were good) and run away from him. Sure, he hadn’t been the prettiest in the Chantry choir, but no girl had ever  _ run _ before. That was new. Maybe it was the taint. 

Speaking of which: there was something tainted heading right for him. 

Alistair drew his sword - whatever the creature was it seemed to be on its own, but it was quiet, and sometimes surprise was the difference between life and death. It was right around then that he’d realized that maybe going into the deep dark woods by himself was maybe, just  _ maybe _ , a bad idea. Darkspawn weren’t usually the type to be glowing targets, after all. 

A branch broke behind him, and Alistair whirled to face his assailant only to find himself rather ironically blinded by a bright blue light. Figures  _ this  _ would be the day.   
  
Instead of attacking, however, his assailant lowered their hands and gave his eyes ample time to adjust and understand that the person in front of him was not a Darkspawn at all but in fact, his fellow Warden.   
“Maker, I’m sorry! It’s me! Leliana told me you went off by yourself.”    
“Yes. Right. That’s my bad, I’ll head ba--”    
“We should talk,” she blurted out. Suddenly, he preferred the threat of death. 

The world around Alistair went dark again as the light coming from Nev’s hands extinguished. The first thing he could make out were her eyes, gleaming and worried in the scant moonlight, and already he knew that this was not a conversation he would enjoy.    
“Listen, I get it,” he started, but immediately she shook her head.    
“No, I’m sorry, but I don’t think you do.”    
“It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? I fell in love with you and you didn’t fall in love with me. There. We talked, I’m alright with it, you’re alright with it, we can go back to our witty banter and you can go tell Morrigan and Leliana all about how stupid Alistair got his feelings hurt. My apologies for disturbing the peace.” Already in process of his dramatic exit, he was halted by her hand on his wrist. She didn’t even grab him, just… touched her fingers to his skin, and it was enough to paralyze him.   
“In what world would I ever do that to you?” Alistair sighed, but her words were enough to turn him back around. As much as he wanted to run away, it would be better to be rejected outright than wonder what she had to say, anyway.

“Right. I’m sorry. This is just…  _ difficult. _ ” There was a pause.  
“Circle mages aren’t exactly…  _ allowed _ to fall in love,” she began to explain. Of course she would find the kindest and most reasonable way to reject him. “And, sure, there were certain…  _ activities _ among the apprentices but most people were too scared to get attached. Even Jowan was terrified when he came to me about Lily.”   
“Terrified enough to turn to blood magic,” he sighed.    
“... Yes. You see, I never -- well, I mean, I heard stories and I read books about people who fell in love and stayed together to the end, but I never felt even a  _ fraction _ of that, toward  _ anyone _ , and that was  _ fine _ . I was never really interested, to tell the truth.”    
“And you still aren’t,” Alistair added, hoping that this conversation would just  _ end _ . If he were really lucky, the ground would open up and swallow him.  
“I … I don’t know.” 

Well. That wasn’t the answer he was expecting. 

“What?”    
“I don’t…  _ know _ … love. I could describe it to you the same way authors do, but I don’t know it. But… Maker, when I look at you, my heart glows and I’m so  _ infinitely _ proud and happy to be near you, and if that’s love, then… well.” 

Alistair could feel his jaw dropping further down to the ground with each word out of her mouth, grateful for the cover of the night... until her weight shifted and he remembered that night time was far less challenging for an elf. “... I see. Your silence says it all. I think we can both agree this has been a rather trying night for us both and we should do our best to forget it, yes?” 

He made a lucky reach for her as she tried to rush past him in the dark, grabbing her by the arm before she could run back to camp. Cursing his eyesight the whole time, Alistair took tiny steps towards Nev until their bodies were pressed together, and he could use her eyes as a landmark for his hands to find her face. He could feel the sharp jut of her cheekbones under his thumbs as he swept downwards, past the ridge of her nose and to the corners of her lips. Nev stood perfectly still and neither backed away nor protested his touch, and he took her laying her hands on his chest as a final affirmation before he kissed her. 

It was such a chaste gesture, merely pressing their lips together there, in the dark. It almost felt like one of the Chantry sisters from the monastery was due to burst through the brush with a torch and scold them both for being out past curfew, but no such thing ever came. They had one perfect moment to share before Alistair’s neck began to cramp from bending so far down, and he was forced to return to standing upright. He barely even heard her voice over the beating of his own heart.   
“Could you… do that again?” 

Easier the second time, considering Nev popped onto her tip-toes to meet him halfway. Now sure of the location of her mouth, Alistair allowed his hands to fall to her waist instead. His following attempts to deepen the kiss were met with a clumsy-yet-endearing enthusiasm that quickly turned into something that knocked the feeling clean out of his knees. 

Overall, as far as first kisses went… well. He reckoned it would take a few more repeats to make an accurate assessment, but there would be time for that later. He was sure of one thing, though: he loved her. Painfully so, and certainly enough to give her as much time as she needed to work out what love was for herself. 

But, if the way she wrapped her arms about him and laid her head on his chest was any indicator, he reckoned she just figured it out.


End file.
